Brainwave Meditation: Everything You Need to Know

Brainwave meditation is one of the main objectives of the developers of meditation programs.

Their claims are massive: at the touch of a mouse button — or in the time it takes to hit play on your MP3 player — they can give you an experience that would take years of practice to achieve by other means. How realistic are these claims? And, if they are trustworthy, which is the best meditation program to use?

The answer to the first question can be found in the brain research of the last century. Theta brain waves — characterized by a 4-7Hz brainwave frequency — have been found in experienced meditation practitioners all over the world. Switching your brain into a theta state can really be a shortcut to the mental and spiritual highs experienced by these master meditators.

In other articles on this blog, we’ve looked at the science behind these claims, and such benefits are more than achievable. You can learn more about the science behind brainwave entrainment here and here.

The second question is more difficult to answer. Meditation CDs of all kinds have been available since the mid-70s, and choosing one is a matter both of personal preference and hardnosed consumer awareness.

There are a bewildering variety of meditation CDs on the market. The very simplest rely on soothing music and ‘guided meditation’ voiceovers. These may be relaxing and hypnotic, lulling you into drowsiness, but they certainly aren’t a shortcut to theta state brainwaves.

More sophisticated offerings incorporate brainwave entrainment music. They use psychoacoustic principles to generate an entrainment response, so that your brainwave frequency alters to match that of the stimulus. A skilled developer can fill an entire soundtrack with these auditory cues, enabling you to switch your brainwaves into whatever state you wish within a few minutes.

And brainwave entrainment music of this type is no longer limited to CDs. It is also available in the form of meditation software and MP3 downloads. That’s because computer sound resources have improved enormously, and the techniques needed to produce entrainment effects are now widely understood. It is often more convenient for a small-scale binaural experimenter to make audio tracks available via MP3 download than for them to press a CD.

You might even download your own entrainment software like Transparent Corp’s Mind WorkStation, enabling you to incorporate source sounds of your own choosing with binaural beats to make your own personalized brainwave entrainment music!

However, this approach doesn’t take into account the full subtlety of the brain. If you want to explore new brainwave states, it isn’t enough to randomly blast yourself with entrainment frequencies. An up-to-date brainwave meditation program takes account of the need to proceed gently when you switch yourself into deep theta meditation.

The best meditation CDs are ‘second generation’ products like the Brain Evolution System, which incorporate a whole panoply of esoteric sound techniques that promote the healthy, balanced, integrated function of the brain in all its complexity.